A friend, working his way again through Moby Dick writes me to say that the book contains “the greatest description of the American soul,” in the first paragraph of Chapter 49:

There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody’s expense but his own. However, nothing dispirits, and nothing seems worth while disputing. He bolts down all events, all creeds, and beliefs, and persuasions, all hard things visible and invisible, never mind how knobby; as an ostrich of potent digestion gobbles down bullets and gun flints. And as for small difficulties and worryings, prospects of sudden disaster, peril of life and limb; all these, and death itself, seem to him only sly, good-natured hits, and jolly punches in the side bestowed by the unseen and unaccountable old joker. That odd sort of wayward mood I am speaking of, comes over a man only in some time of extreme tribulation; it comes in the very midst of his earnestness, so that what just before might have seemed to him a thing most momentous, now seems but a part of the general joke. There is nothing like the perils of whaling to breed this free and easy sort of genial, desperado philosophy; and with it I now regarded this whole voyage of the Pequod, and the great White Whale its object.

“No De Toqueville, or Pascal, or any European,” my friend writes, “can understand this paragraph. Theologically it’s appalling. But it’s just right about the way we are.”

It’s not, of course—except when it is. Americans swing to such extremes: the greatest desperados, the sternest Puritans.

Randy Pausch, famous for his “last lecture,” has died.

Mr. Pausch was diagnosed with incurable pancreatic cancer in September 2006. His popular last lecture at Carnegie Mellon in September 2007 garnered international attention and was viewed by millions on the Internet.

In it, Mr. Pausch celebrated living the life he had always dreamed of instead of concentrating on impending death.

Wall Street Journal writer Jeffrey Zaslow, who first popularized the lecture with his September 2007 column, also wrote this final farewell to Pausch in May.

Have an hour or so free? For your viewing, here is Pausch’s last lecture:

After making an emergency landing in the Philippines, passengers of the Quanta flight from Hong Kong to Melbourne today described their experience of the plane’s in-flight accident thus: “There was an almighty crack,” and, “There was a big bang.”

Thankfully they’ve all landed safely — but perhaps not without the lingering sensation of nearly meeting the Maker of the cosmos.

Two interesting articles in the Wall Street Journal today. One about Bobby Jindal’s path from Hinduism to Christianity to Catholic Christianity:

Mr. Jindal’s roommate at Brown University became his baptism sponsor. His parents did not attend the ceremony, which he says was “certainly disappointing.” But he persisted. Mr. Jindal participated in nearly every campus Bible study group. One morning, while Mr. Jindal prayed in Brown’s chapel, a priest who had observed the young man tapped him on the shoulder and asked him to teach a Catholic education program for youths, at a local parish. Not yet confirmed, Mr. Jindal said “I don’t think I can do that. I’m not Catholic.”

“Oh, look,” joked the priest, “since Vatican II, anything’s allowed.” So Mr. Jindal accepted.

The other about kidney donations:

Lots of well-intentioned individuals want to give something of themselves, but few take the project as far as my friend Anthony DeGiulio, a 36-year-old securities trader who yesterday donated a kidney. The really unusual thing is that he gave it to a perfect stranger.